This Sunday Sermon was inspired by a recent post on things I love recently. Thanks for the idea Alex.

Cast your mind back to 2006, when failed presidential candidate and former Vice President Al Gore was searching for a new ’cause’.

He chose Global Warming and for a while he fooled a lot of people.

He won an Oscar for a largely unproven ‘scientifically based’ documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” that made wildly exaggerated claims about man-made climate change. With hindsight perhaps “A Convenient Lie” would have been a better title. Then he was awarded the much discredited Nobel Peace Prize – although just what climate has to do with peace was never properly explained, after all people do fight wars in the rain!

He went on to found an ‘activist group’ and to create a new nonpartisan global movement around climate change that he misleadingly called the ‘Climate Reality Project’ – misleading because it had very little to do with reality.

Yes, Gore was in the ascendency and was now the world’s leading advocate of Global Warming….brrrrrr …ooops… make that Climate Change would you.

As lately as last January Gore took his old college roomy Tommy Lee Jones and a contingent of other gullible celebrities, donors and scientists on a cruise to Antarctica. Ostensibly they were there to see for themselves the effects of Global Warming, but the real purpose was probably to try to attract more publicity for Gore’s Climate Change crusade. When I say he ‘took them’ of course I meant the multi millionaire Gore was kind enough to let them pay for their trip themselves!

But last gasp publicity stunts or not, things haven’t been going so well recently for the Gore crusade. In fact if you look at the numbers, which I always like to do, you will see that the downward spiral has been a steep one.

For example, at its zenith just a few years ago Gore’s organization could spend the best part of $30 million on PR, advertising and political lobbying. It had offices in over half the US States, sometimes more than one office per state, and employed over 300 people.

Today those 300 employees have become just 30 or so, and all its state offices have been shut. There are no more hefty advertising campaigns and no more highly paid lobbyists in Washington. Not surprisingly financial donations have also dropped, by around 80 percent. And so cold a political potato is Climate Change nowadays that in the 2012 Presidential election campaign question sessions it wasn’t even mentioned!

Now Gore is going to call it the “Alliance for Climate Protection”, probably a recognition that all the claptrap he was formerly spouting has been largely discredited – a bit like himself.

The climate does change, Al, there’s no doubt about that. But the only climate man changes is the political climate where you can go from hero to zero when enough people catch on to the fact that you really don’t know what you are talking about!

So if you are ready to give your head a bit of a work out to start the week you’ve come to the right place.

Easy, tricky and difficult, you should find something in this lot to make you think a bit. And if you get stuck you know the answers are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below – but NO cheating.

Enjoy.

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Q. 1: We all know about Martha Stewart, but what did the American Martha Graham become famous for?

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Q. 2: What is the capital of Finland?

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Q. 3: What in the human body is the epidermis?

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Q. 4: Sitting Bull, a victorious chief at the Battle of Little Big Horn later went on tour in which travelling show?

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Q. 5: In which famous short animation movie from 1969 does a beloved Disney character meet an untimely end?

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Q. 6: Which very popular writer with a degree invented the word ‘nerd’?

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Q. 7: Which three animals (a point for each) are directly responsible for the most deaths each year in the USA? (The mosquito is excluded, as are fatalities resulting from a car crash with animals)

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Q. 8: James Madison was the first US President to sport which clothing fashion?

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Q. 9: In which two movies does Henry Fonda play the US President; and in which monumental movie does he play the ‘Medal of Honor’ winning son of US President Teddy Roosevelt? (Again a point for each correct answer)

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Q. 10: Which Frenchman, famous for abhorring bad drink, said “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world”?

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Q. 11: David Hedison, Jack Lord, Rik van Nutter, Jeffrey Wright, John Terry, Cec Linder, Michael Pate, Norman Burton and Bernard Casey have all played which role in movies?

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Q. 12: What kind of burst is the most powerful radiation known to science?

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Q. 13: Leningrad, Fort Sumter, Sarajevo and Massada are all examples of what?

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Q. 14: Which famous Russian female made around the world headlines after the 3rd of November 1957?

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Q. 15: Like other coastal regions in the area, what was the coast of Florida called in the 16th century?

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Q. 16: What was depicted on the seal of the Knights Templar?

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Q. 17: Which worry prone movie character is fluent in more than 6,000,000 forms of communication?

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Q. 18: The name for which delightful and lofty empyrean goal stems from the Persian word for ‘walled enclosure’?

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Q. 19: In which five US states has the USA tested atom bombs? (Another chance to get a point for each correct answer)

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Q. 20: Philadelphia is the old name for the largest city in which country?

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ANSWERS

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Q. 1: We all know about Martha Stewart, but what did the American Martha Graham become famous for?

A. 1: As a Modern Dancer / Choreographer

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Q. 2: What is the capital of Finland?

A. 2: Helsinki

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Q. 3: What in the human body is the epidermis?

A. 3: Skin

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Q. 4: Sitting Bull, a victorious chief at the Battle of Little Big Horn later went on tour in which travelling show?

A. 4: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

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Q. 5: In which famous short animation movie from 1969 does a beloved Disney character meet an untimely end?

A. 5: Bambi meets Godzilla

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Q. 6: Which very popular writer with a degree invented the word ‘nerd’?

A. 6: Dr. Seuss. From the book ‘If I ran the zoo’.

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Q. 7: Which three animals (a point for each) are directly responsible for the most deaths each year in the USA? (The mosquito is excluded, as are fatalities resulting from a car crash with animals)

A. 7: Bees, dogs and horses.

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Q. 8: James Madison was the first US President to sport which clothing fashion?

A. 8: Long trousers (pants)

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Q. 9: In which two movies does Henry Fonda play the US President; and in which monumental movie does he play the ‘Medal of Honor’ winning son of US President Teddy Roosevelt? (Again a point for each correct answer)

A. 9: Fonda plays the US President in ‘Fail Safe’ and ‘Meteor’. In ‘The longest day’ he plays Teddy Roosevelt Jr.

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Q. 10: Which Frenchman, famous for abhorring bad drink, said “A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world”?

A. 10: Louis Pasteur

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Q. 11: David Hedison, Jack Lord, Rik van Nutter, Jeffrey Wright, John Terry, Cec Linder, Michael Pate, Norman Burton and Bernard Casey have all played which role in movies?

A. 11: CIA agent Felix Leiter in Bond films.

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Q. 12: What kind of burst is the most powerful radiation known to science?

A. 12: A gamma ray burst. (A burst recorded in December 1997 was for a few seconds brighter than all the other objects in the entire universe put together.)

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Q. 13: Leningrad, Fort Sumter, Sarajevo and Massada are all examples of what?

A. 13: Famous or infamous sieges.

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Q. 14: Which famous Russian female made around the world headlines after the 3rd of November 1957?

A. 14: Laika. The Russian cosmonaut dog. (or muttnik )

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Q. 15: Like other coastal regions in the area, what was the coast of Florida called in the 16th century?

A. 15: The Spanish Main

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Q. 16: What was depicted on the seal of the Knights Templar?

A. 16: Two knights riding on one horse.

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Q. 17: Which worry prone movie character is fluent in more than 6,000,000 forms of communication?

A. 17: C3PO

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Q. 18: The name for which delightful and lofty empyrean goal stems from the Persian word for ‘walled enclosure’?

A. 18: Paradise

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Q. 19: In which five US states has the USA tested atom bombs? (Another chance to get a point for each correct answer)

A. 19: New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Alaska and Mississippi.

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Q. 20: Philadelphia is the old name for the largest city in which country?